[DAILYMAIL.CO.UK] Witnesses say two gunmen shot and killed a 14-year-old Chicago boy Friday night as he stood on his porch, and then left him to die in the front hallway of his own home, authorities said.

The shooting came just hours after a 15-year-old boy was fatally shot in a separate attack.

#6
Rev. Jesse Jackson was interviewed on Fox. He's suggesting that firearm related crime should become a 'Department of Homeland Security' issue and manufacturers be held accountable. I think I see where this is rapidly going.

#11
Little-reported fact about last year's record in Chicago -- only 16% of them were passed along to prosecutors. Another 9% were flagged as "solved" but without enough information to prosecute due to lack of evidence, witnesses, etc.

The remaining 75% were unsolved.

I'd say "they're not even trying", but I think the average cop *IS*, they're just not allowed to actually accomplish anything. Then there's that "snitches get stitches" culture...

#7
600,000,000 more rounds ordered recently bringing the total to 1.8 billion that have been confirmed. Who knows how many have been stocked under the table. Hollow point rounds are not for training. In fact does anyone else find it disturbing that our military cannot use hollow points in war but our policing forces specifically use them at home against the people? I saw a road sign by my house where new power lines are being installed. It read "rough road ahead." I could only chuckle to myself at the appropriateness.

#9
Many GWCC Perts are arguing that the Sun per se + Solar histoire' on Earth is a-okay, while the Washington Polcritters refuse to confirm or deny anything as per OWG + OWG NAU in 2015.

THE BURDEN, THEN, IS EFFECTIVELY ON THE US MAINSTREAM + POKEY CONSPIRACY THEORISTS TO DISCOVER WHAT KIND OF MIGHTY DISASTER(S) OR MAJOR EVENT(S) THE GOVT IS PURCHASING ALL THIS AMMO + EMERGENCY WARES, ETC. FOR BUT REFUSE TO TELL US.

[TELEGRAPH.CO.UK] Piers Morgan's US talk show on CNN is facing an embarrassing climb-down after viewing figures dropped to the worst levels the network has seen in at least 21 years."Hey, Ted! I gotta really great idea to boost ratings! Let's hire a dork for our prime time slot!"
"Whoa! Good idea! Maybe we could get somebody like Piers Morgan?"

#4
interesting...I figured this twat would've gotten some sort of big bump this past month from vulturing anti-gun nonsense in the Newtown aftermath and his dustup w/A.Jones. We already have enough un-informed voters getting talking points from sanctimonious douchebag low-info American commentators, I don't think we need anymore of the same from some obtuse foreigner.

#7
@Broadhead - I'm fairly confident that the reason he did make all the gun control fuss was to try to increase his ratings. I find it highly amusing that although he got some press out of it the ratings never materialized.

[HOSTED.AP.ORG] Four women have gone topless in St. Peter's Square to protest the Vatican's opposition to gay marriage.

Police quickly took the women away Sunday, and the pope appeared not to have been disturbed as he delivered his traditional prayer from his studio window overlooking the piazza.

On their bare backs, the women had painted slogans "In Gay We Trust," and "Shut Up." One of them, Inna Shevchenko, said: "Today we are here to protest against homophobia."

The small demonstration coincided with a march in Gay Paree that is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of people to protest the French president's plan to legalize gay marriage and let gay couples adopt children.

French Catholic bishops and other religious leaders have strongly opposed the proposal, and the Vatican has backed them.

#6
Redneck Jim: You might have a reason to complain about the absence of a firm date for Christmas in the Gospels.

The date of the Last Supper, however, is set _in the Gospels_ as happening during Passover, thus setting the date of Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday permanently in relation to Passover; Easter will always be the third day after Passover. No council, Catholic or Protestant, decided that. It's in the book.

#8
Dec. 25th (or Jan 6th in the old Julian calendar) was derived via a belief that Jesus was conceived on the same day of the year as the day on which he would later be crucified.

Such a belief is consonant with a Talmudic tradition that asserts the same thing about the Patriarchs of the Old Testament. It places Jesus as the culmination of the Patriarchs, again consonant with the earliest Church traditions.

At least some of the local churches, particularly those in north Africa near to Israel, appear to have held that to be the day of Jesus' birth from very early times. It wasn't made up arbitrarily, but was seen as exhibiting a deep symbolic and spiritual truth, not only about Jesus as fulfillment of OT promises but also in the context of the Church's annual calendar - the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentacost etc. following one another in progression and offering a sequence of focus for reflection, celebration and self-examination.

[An Nahar] Hundreds of Kuwait opposition supporters demonstrated on Sunday to demand the dissolution of the parliament elected last month in general polls boycotted by almost all political groups, witnesses said.

Carrying orange flags, protesters marched on the streets of Sabah al-Nasser, a predominantly tribal area just southwest of Kuwait City, and also rolled their eyes, jumped up and down, and hollered poorly rhymed slogans real loud demanding political reforms.

The rally ended peacefully and police did not interfere. Last week, riot police fired tear gas and stun grenades and placed in durance vileDon't shoot, coppers! I'm comin' out! over 70 activists while dispersing a similar protest.

"This is a parliament of shame," said leading opposition figure and former MP Mussallam al-Barrak who led the evening protest. Several former opposition MPs also took part.

Protesters also raised banners calling for an elected government.

The opposition has been staging demonstrations in protest against a government amendment to the key electoral law which it says allows the government to impact the outcome of an election.

But the authorities went ahead and held an election on December 1 which was boycotted by Islamist, nationalist and liberal opposition groups and which resulted in a predominantly pro-government parliament.

A BBC source told The Sunday Express: 'It's directly underneath so if a suicide bomber came in the front door they would be right over it. We've been assured it's bomb proof.'

The BBC refused to comment on the claim however, saying: 'We never discuss security issues.'

The news room, described as one of the largest in the world, will go live in March, broadcasting the BBC's three main daily bulletins at 1pm, 6pm and 10pm. The bulletins will undergo a makeover but the source said the changes will be subtle.

#2
That and Chinese prefer having a male for various reasons leads to 20 million+ men that there will not be women for.

This kind of thing has been the case for most of Chinese history, until the abolition of polygamy in the 40's. It was apparently legal in Hong Kong until 1971. Female infanticide was also widely practiced there since antiquity, way before the imposition of the one-child rule in the late 1970's, on the principle that sons supported their parents, whereas daughters became stoop labor for someone else. That surprised me, given the Chinese practice of the bride price, where the groom has to hand over a significant sum of money to the bride's family. It's possible that the bride price was a direct result of relative scarcity of women created by the Chinese tradition of female infanticide as well as polygamy.

Soviet or Chinese, as a general rule Commie Govt. housing gave priority to Married Veterans-Couples or Families [Kiddies andor Grandparents], NOT BACHELORS = SINGLE UNMARRIED MEN.

Even iff one presumes that these 20.0Milyuhn Males all have university or post-graduate degrees, many contemporary Russian + Chinese comapnies would still give priority or preference to Married Men, espec for those on the track for Supvy, Management or Board positions.

"20.0 Milyuhn" = way more Candidates for employment than needed in Industry, so many will be forced to look for work + love overseas in non-Chinese or non-Asian countries. IT WILL BE A LONG STRUGGLE FOR CHINA + ASIA, AS THE SOCIETIES IN MANY OF THESE FOREIGN COUNTRIES PREFER TO SEE THEIR DAUGHTERS OR FEMALES MARRIED OFF TO MALES OF SIMILAR CLASS, ETHNICITY, RELIGION OR CULTURE.

The historical alternative is for China to intentionally or covertly kill off these excess males in War(s) - "20.0 Milyuhn" or so is a lot of Soldats to correctly send off to NE Asia or East Asia War agz the US + Japan. IT SUPPORTS WHY CHINA IS WILLING TO ACCEPT PROHIBITIVE CASUALTIES AMONG ITS PLA FORCES IN ANY ATTACK ON TAIWAN.

h/t instapundit
...Rather than cutting wasteful spending, the federal government added $4 billion each day to our gross national debt. This path is not sustainable. I support a more limited government that focuses on fulfilling its core duties and responsibilities. Only then can we identify the national priorities worthy of taxpayer funding.

#2
IMO US Debt could roughly rise to as high or near US$25.0Trilyuhn by EOY 2013, espec iff war between the US + Iran, China occurs this summer.
US Debt could reach par or under US$25.0Trilyuhn just on current spending rates - depending on how serious + protractive a US-involved NE Asia mil conflict is, US Debt can easily rise to US$40-50.0Trilyuhn by EOY 2013 just for trying to avoid a Limited or Full-scale Nuclear War in NE Asia or East Asia.

The Euros are complaining to + about Obama, in part, because the steady rise in US Debt levels or ceilings makes it harder for already debt-ridden Euro Govts-Banks to borrow from themselves increasingly debt-ridden, cautious or discretionary US Banks = Fed Reserve - THE TRADITIONAL ENDOWMENT OR ADVANTAGE OF BORROWING FROM A US FED, BANKS WID LOWER DEBT BURDEN THAN EURO-STATES, BANKS IS RAPIDLY DISAPPEARING.

All thats left is for the debt-ridden US + Euros to borrow from US RIVAL, "POST-US" WORLD #1 WANNABE RISING CHINA, + UNDEVELOPED THIRD WORLD -"Third World" per se read, CHINA AGAIN.

#7
They're buying the brand not necessarily the factories. You got to wonder how lawyers can advertize on TV so much and avoid this wonderful opportunity to create new 'injury' law against the agents that doomed people's livelihoods. If you can sue for a disease for which you have no symptoms, and thus no real injury, why can't you sue those who took your job away by reckless and willful practice?

[USATODAY] Police said Sunday they have nabbedYez got nuttin' on me, coppers! Nuttin'! six suspects in another gang rape of a bus passenger in India, four weeks after a brutal attack on a student on a moving bus in the capital outraged Indians and led to calls for tougher rape laws.

Police officer Raj Jeet Singh said a 29-year-old woman was the only passenger on a bus as she was traveling to her village in northern Punjab state on Friday night. The driver refused to stop at her village despite her repeated pleas and drove her to a desolate location, he said.

There, the driver and the conductor took her to a building where they were joined by five friends and took turns raping her throughout the night, Singh said.

The driver dropped the woman off at her village early Saturday, he said.

Singh said police arrested six suspects on Saturday and were searching for another.

Gurmej Singh, deputy superintendent of police, said all six admitted involvement in the rape. He said the victim was recovering at home.

[An Nahar] Astronomers on Friday said they had observed the largest structure yet seen in the cosmos, a cluster of galaxies from the early Universe that spans an astonishing four billion light years."Wholly mackeral, Bob! Look at the size of that thing!"
"Cheeze, that's big! How'd we ever miss that before?"
The sprawling structure is known as a large quasar group (LQG), in which quasars -- the nuclei of ancient galaxies, powered by supermassive black holes -- clump together.

The discovery in the deep Universe was made by a team led by Roger Clowes at the Jeremiah Horrocks Institute at Britain's University of Central Lancashire.

It would take a spaceship travelling at the speed of light four thousand million years to get from one end of the cluster to the other.

To give a sense of scale, our galaxy (the Milky Way) is separated from its nearest neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, by two and a half million light years.

"While it is difficult to fathom the scale of this LQG, we can say quite definitely it is the largest structure ever seen in the entire Universe," Clowes said in a press statement issued by Britain's Royal Astronomical Society (RAS).

"This is hugely exciting, not least because it runs counter to our current understanding of the scale of the Universe."

Sri Lanka's President Mahinda Rajapakse on Sunday sacked the country's first woman chief justice by ratifying parliament's vote to impeach her, his spokesman said. The move came despite mounting calls on Rajapakse to halt the impeachment which has been seen by rights groups and Western nations as a blow to judicial independence in a country emerging from decades of ethnic war.

"The president this morning signed the letter removing Shirani Bandaranayake from the office of chief justice," spokesman Mohan Samaranayake told AFP. "The letter was hand-delivered to her by a secretary accompanied by presidential security staff."

Samaranayake said the president acted in line with the constitution to remove Bandaranayake, 54, following Friday's overwhelming parliamentary vote to remove her.

Legislators found her guilty of tampering with a case involving a company from which her sister had bought an apartment, of failing to declare dormant bank accounts, and of staying in office while her husband faced a bribery charge.

Bandaranayake stormed out of a parliamentary select committee hearing last month after accusing ruling party legislators of verbally abusing her and not giving her a fair trial. She has denied all allegations against her.

The government moved to impeach her in November after a spate of supreme court decisions went against the government. Among others, she stalled a bill which sought to grant greater political and financial power to the president's youngest brother Basil, who is the economic development minister.

A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.